Kennedy Center Fundraising In Deep Turmoil After Trump Takeover

President Donald Trump has brought in his top fundraiser to shore up giving at the Kennedy Center after a series of stumbles by its development leader, a former TV host close to Kari Lake, according to six people familiar with the matter.

Trump intervened in January and tapped his longtime supporter Meredith O’Rourke to stabilize the Kennedy Center’s fundraising operation, in a move that effectively sidelined senior vice president Lisa Dale, according to three current and one former employee.

O’Rourke is also in charge of fundraising for the new White House ballroom and helped raise the money to replace the Rose Garden with a paved patio.

Dale, Lake’s best friend, who also served as her campaign aide in 2022 and 2024, has little experience in development.

She often exaggerates financial commitments, has blown off meetings with top potential donors and even pooh-poohed the addition of the Trump name to the Kennedy Center, according to people with knowledge of the situation who were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the press or feared retaliation.

The turmoil compounds problems for an already struggling institution that is approaching a two-year renovation closure after top-tier performers canceled shows for political reasons.

Dale was hired with the expectation that she would raise more than $100 million a year, according to three current employees. Dale, according to the people, and Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell in a public statement, have boasted that they raised $130 million in 2025.

But the fundraising figures Dale gives to Grenell are sometimes rosier than the money that actually comes in to the center, according to seven people familiar with the matter. Three of the people are current employees, three are former and the seventh has direct knowledge of Dale’s work.

A White House official acknowledged O’Rourke’s new role in an email, but said Dale remained in good standing. “Meredith is helping but Lisa Dale has NOT been sidelined,” the official said. “They are both involved in fundraising. Would strongly push back against that.”

O’Rourke didn’t respond to a request for comment but a person close to her said the two work well together.

When presented with POLITICO’s reporting, Dale said in a text message: “This is all total BS” but didn’t respond when asked for additional comment. In a statement, Grenell also said: “This is total BS.” Donna Arduin, the CFO, added in a statement: “$130M was raised under Grenell’s leadership.”

Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi said in a statement that the "former leadership underutilized the institution, whereas we have added many red carpet and fundraising events." Daravi said the center has "hosted a plethora of notable names" from country stars like Miranda Lambert and Brooks and Dunn to sports legends like Cal Ripken Jr., actors such as Sylvester Stallone and others.

"With heightened enthusiasm for the Trump Kennedy Center has come more opportunities and an institution where everyone is welcome regardless of their politics," Daravi said.

In recent years, the Kennedy Center has struggled financially, most notably during the Covid pandemic which led to its temporary closure and “overwhelming financial losses,” according to the center. Grenell has also said that when he came in, “we had no money in the bank” and staff was paid with debt reserves. While Congress allocated funds for the coming two-year renovation of the Kennedy Center, the move, which will close the space, and the new political tenor of the organization is also giving some past big donors cold feet.

“Since the president is closing the Kennedy Center for a couple years, I’m not sure there’s anything to give money to right now,” said Cappy McGarr, who was a trustee and longtime major donor for the Kennedy Center. He also received the National Medal of Arts from former President Joe Biden. “After the Kennedy Center opens back up, hopefully donors will return.”

Added Alexandra Stanton, a former Kennedy Center trustee appointed by President Barack Obama: “To paraphrase Lincoln, a house divided against itself cannot stand. Or raise money.”

But major companies like Amazon.com, Booz Allen Hamilton and defense giant RTX have donated in the last year.

Dale has exaggerated donor commitments and pledges, according to three current and two former employees. That’s resulted in high-profile red carpet premieres and other events happening without sponsorships fully secured or with funds moved from unrelated donor commitments to cover the shortfalls, according to the three current employees and the person familiar.

She has told colleagues that she’s gotten numerous private equity firms to commit to a range of program sponsorships, but none have come through with money, said two of the current employees. She has also used outside fundraisers to help but they often failed to raise much cash, according to the employees.

For instance, Dale said there was a sponsor for the upcoming Vienna Philharmonic and that the Kennedy Center could host a gala celebration, according to the three current employees. While she told international programmers the funding was all set, the donor fell through and now the gala won’t happen, according to two of the current employees.

“There is a fire drill for every single event,” said one current employee. “Everyone’s always scrambling.”

The Vienna Philharmonic didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Kennedy Center press office said in an email that corporate sponsors and donors have responded “positively to changes in leadership and programming.” The email also said that $101 million was raised during the comparable time period in 2024, compared to the $130 million Grenell mentioned for 2025. It also said that last year’s Kennedy Center Honors, the institution’s top annual event, raised $23 million, almost double what was raised the previous year.

Ticket sales, an important source of revenue for the Kennedy Center, have also declined since Trump’s takeover of the organization. In late October, the Washington Post reported that for the previous two months, 57 percent of tickets were sold, with some being comped, for the average production, compared to 93 percent of tickets getting sold or comped the previous fall. When asked about declining ticket sales, Grenell said that arts institutions nationally have been suffering and that his aim was to have popular programming that wouldn’t lose money.

In contrast to previous years where there were thousands on a wait list, the Kennedy Center had to give out hundreds of tickets for free to attend the show to make sure it was a packed house, according to two of the current employees.

The development department has shrunk from 94 people employed when Trump took over the Kennedy Center to 16 people in November, according to a letter Grenell sent to Congress. Dale has staffed the development department with six people drawn from Lake’s failed campaigns who are not qualified for their jobs, according to three current employees.

The Kennedy Center also hired Lake’s husband, Jeff Halperin, to work on multimedia for the institution, and they are paying him $10,833 a month to produce social media videos. In his letter to Congress, Grenell praised Halperin’s “incredible multimedia expertise” and said “he is doing the job of two previous employees and is creating content faster than we’ve ever seen.”

Senior staffers started to become concerned with Dale’s decision making when she hired Floyd Brown as the vice president of development even though he didn’t have any arts fundraising experience, according to the two current employees. Brown, who lives in Arizona, said he was fired last May after CNN started asking about his history of anti-LGBTQ+ remarks. Brown said he never meant to offend anyone with his comments.

Brown didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Grenell said last month that the Kennedy Center is in “a phenomenal situation financially” due to Trump’s ability to raise money for the center. In a November letter to Congress, he said Dale had helped raise $117 million up to that point in 2025 and “hiring her was an enormous improvement over the deficit spending the center was engaging in before. … For this, she should be thanked.”

But behind the scenes, Grenell and Dale don’t have a good working relationship, according to two of the current employees.

Dale met Lake when they both worked in local TV news in Arizona, according to two of the current employees. Besides advising Lake during her unsuccessful Senate run and gubernatorial campaign, she was a pro golfer and worked in real estate in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Lake is now serving in the Trump administration heading up the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

Dale also doesn’t have many connections to major donors that could help the Kennedy Center, with her contacts mostly being from Arizona, where she still spends around 40 percent of her time, according to three current and two former employees and the person familiar.

In the last year, she’s failed to show up for meetings with companies that the Kennedy Center was courting to be major donors, including Fortune 100 companies, according to two of the current employees. She either hasn’t shown up at the meetings at the Kennedy Center or the companies’ D.C. offices or told other employees to do the meeting instead.

Dale has also told colleagues multiple times in the last two weeks that the Kennedy Center should not have changed its name to the Trump Kennedy Center because it hurts her donor base, according to two of the current employees who have heard the comments.

“We’re poking donors in the eye,” Dale told colleagues, according to the two current employees.

Three current and two former Kennedy Center staffers said they are also concerned about the frequent promotion of Lake on official Kennedy Center social media channels, and employees often joke that Dale and the former Lake staffers are positioning Lake as a future president of the Kennedy Center.

A spokesperson for Lake said in a statement that Lake “is in no way advocating to become the next president of the Trump Kennedy Center.”

One current employee and the person familiar with the Kennedy Center said they’ve heard Dale sometimes tell colleagues that a number of VIPs are coming to an event and when asked who, Dale says Lake is the VIP coming.

“Ambassador Grenell, Lisa Dale, my husband Jeff, and the incredible team they’ve built are bringing efficiency to the Trump Kennedy Center, restoring it to its rightful place as the nation’s premier arts center and getting more done without excess waste,” Lake said in a statement.

Several fundraising ideas that Dale has been a part of have been failures, according to two current and three former employees and the person familiar. Early last summer, there was a lot of talk about partnering with the New York Yankees to get Kennedy Center donors to pay for a table at a luncheon at One World Trade Center in New York and then donors would go see a Yankees game together, according to the people.

“All of us were like: what does this have to do with the Kennedy Center and the arts?” said one of the former employees. Planning for an event centered around the Yankees even got to thinking about whether Trump could attend the event at some point, but then the partnership fell through, according to the four people.

A spokesperson for the Yankees didn’t respond to a request for comment.